7 Historically Accurate Moments In 'Once Upon A Time In Hollywood'

Truth really is stranger than fiction.

Aug 21, 2019 2:00pm

By Susannah Guthrie

WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

If you've seen Quentin Tarantino's latest epic, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, chances are you'll have been left with more questions than answers about the infamous Manson murders that horrified Los Angeles in the late 1960s.

After all, the film's ending isn't exactly what we'd call, well, historically accurate. In reality, Sharon Tate and her three friends didn't survive the night of August 8, 1969, as depicted in the film, but rather were tragically murdered by three of Charles Manson's followers in a brutal home invasion.

But while Tarantino's two lead characters, portrayed by Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio, are entirely fictional, most of the film's other personalities are real, as are plenty of the events.

To see seven key details Tarantino got right about the Manson family and Sharon Tate, keep reading.

In the film, Manson's right-hand man, Charles 'Tex' Watson, tells Brad Pitt's character Cliff Booth, "I'm the devil, and I'm here to do the devil's business". While actor Austin Butler's delivery of the line is clumsy and even comical, these were the exact words uttered by the real-life Watson before he and his cronies brutally killed Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger and Wojciech Frykowski.

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2. The Manson Family takeover of Spahn Movie Ranch

As outlandish as it seems in the film, Spahn Movie Ranch really was an actual place and Charles Manson and his followers really did live there with the blessing of its blind, ageing owner, George Spahn, in exchange for free labour. George's favourite Manson family member, Squeaky Fromme (portrayed in the film by Dakota Fanning), was a real person who shared a close bond with her landlord (whether or not sexual favours were involved is a matter of debate), and the Manson family members did run a horse riding business for tourists out of the location in order to make some money on the side. The whole site burned down in 1970, and George himself died four years later, in 1974.

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3. Charles Manson's preliminary visit to Sharon Tate's house

The only brief glimpse we get of Manson (played by Damon Herriman) in the film is when he is shown wandering up into Tate and her husband Roman Polanski's Cielo Drive home unannounced, in an apparent scope-out ahead of the murders. The visit makes for an incredibly unsettling scene, in which Manson asks after the former owner of the home (a music producer who once rejected him for a record deal) and Jay Sebring tells him the owner has since left while a concerned Tate looks on. This scene actually happened in real life, except it was Tate and Polanski's friend Shahrokh Hatami, a photographer, who spoke with him and advised him to approach the landlord for the music producer's whereabouts. Hatami was photographing Tate ahead of a TV show while she packed for a trip to Rome, and he later testified that he, "saw a man enter the yard… He was hesitant—not very sure of where he was going—but at the same time walking very aggressively; he just came in not knocking or ringing a bell or anything."

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4. Sharon Tate's bare feet

A quick Google search will reveal plenty of discussion around Tarantino's apparent obsession with putting female feet in his films, but it turns out the appearance of Tate's was accurate. In the film, we see Sharon Tate go watch one of her own movies (The Wrecking Crew) in a cinema, where she removes her white go-go boots and pops her slightly dirty feet up on the chair in front. It might not be comfortable viewing for any germaphobe, but it turns out Tate did spend a lot of her time barefoot (it was the swinging '60s, after all). In fact, according to the Los Angeles Times, Tate used to trick her into way into fancy restaurants by looping string around her feet and ankles to give the illusion that she was wearing shoes.

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5. Sharon Tate's relationship with her ex-boyfriend, Jay Sebring

Although Sharon Tate is married to Roman Polanski in the film, he's a far less prevalent on-screen presence than Jay Sebring, Tate's former love interest, played by Emile Hirsch. In one scene from the movie, actor Steve McQueen (played by Damian Lewis) explains to a fellow party goer that Sebring is madly in love with Tate and had plans to marry her, but not wanting to lose her after her marriage to Polanski, befriended the pair and became inseparable from them. This is a fairly accurate representation of the trio's relationship and explains why Sebring was with Tate the night she died. Tragically, according to Rolling Stone, Sebring was still wearing a ring Tate had given him while they were dating when he was murdered.

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6. Sharon Tate's final hours at a Mexican restaurant

Tate and her friends really did spend their last moments dining at a Mexican restaurant called El Coyote and it's still open to this day. A Hollywood institution, El Coyote regularly pays tribute to Tate on social media and is a popular stop on any Manson-themed tours.

A significant portion of the film is centred on Cliff's (Brad Pitt) burgeoning relationship with fictional Manson follower Pussycat (Margaret Qualley). Cliff first spots Pussycat as she roams Los Angeles with other family members, dumpster diving and singing "Always Is Always Forever", one of Charles Manson's original songs. They properly meet when Pussycat asks Cliff for a lift back to Spahn Ranch, offering him sexual favours in exchange for his trouble. This was a tactic employed by the real-life Manson women, who relied on hitchhiking as a means for transport. A random factoid: Two of the women were once picked up by Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson, according to Rolling Stone. They also dumpster dived for food, a job mainly reserved for the female members of the group.